World
Shipping firms plead for UN help amid escalating Middle East conflict
The world’s shipping industry has called on the United Nations to provide military protection for vessels operating in the Middle East after the latest seizure of a container ship by Iran, although much commercial traffic between Asia and Europe has already been re-routed around Africa.
The seizure by Iranian forces of a Portuguese-flagged container ship as it left the Persian Gulf has prompted global shipping companies to demand the United Nations provide increased military protection, with shippers already having been forced to take lengthy detours to maintain European trade flows amid the intensifying conflict in the wider region.
Iranian Revolutionary Guards in the Strait of Hormuz seized the MSC Aries on Saturday morning (13 April), increasing unease within a shipping industry that has found itself in the crossfire of tit-for-tat hostilities in the Middle East, and prompting Portugal’s foreign ministry to summon Tehran’s ambassador three days later to demand the release of the ship and crew.
“We have seen a worrying increase in the attacks on shipping,” runs the letter to UN secretary general Antonio Guterres, made public today (April 19) and signed by the UK-based World Shipping Council, the European Community Shipowners’ Association (ECSA) and over a dozen other industry groups.
“The world would be outraged if four airliners were seized and held hostage with innocent souls onboard,” the letter continues. “Regrettably, there does not seem to be the same response or concern for the four commercial vessels and their crews being held hostage,” it states in reference to other vessels seized by Iran in recent months.
The ECSA told Euronews that the intensifying conflict in the region had already led to certain increased shipping costs and jeopardised European trade flows.
“The situation in the region continues to put our seafarers in danger and is increasingly impacting Europe’s supply chain and overall economic security,” secretary general Sotiris Raptis said. “It is essential to safeguard the safety and well-being of our seafarers and to protect key shipping routes and the international principle of freedom of navigation,” he added.
The ECSA welcomed the decision in February to deploy the EU’s naval force to the region in an operation dubbed Aspides, after several months of Yemeni Houthi rebels targeting vessels in the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea. “We continue to encourage all coordinated efforts, including diplomatic, that can contribute to the de-escalation of the crisis in the area,” Raptis said.
Now Israeli military strikes inside Iran have further raised tensions in the region, with recent moves by Tehran stoking fears that the Strait of Hormuz, the gateway to the petroleum-rich Persian Gulf, could become a choke point for global oil supply, with potential knock-on effects on the wider economy.
Some 20 million barrels or about a fifth of the world’s oil supply pass daily through the only connection between the Persian Gulf and global trade routes, analysts at ING Global Markets Research said in a note published on 18 April. “Tensions have already been reflected in somewhat higher oil prices, with a large risk premium already priced in before last weekend,” the ING note stated. “This could easily lead to supply concerns should the situation escalate.”
In an advisory note issued this morning (19 April), the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) warned vessels crossing the Arabian Gulf and western Indian Ocean of a potential increase in sightings of unmanned aircraft, or drones, although it said there appeared to be no imminent threat. “There are currently no indications commercial maritime vessels are the intended target,” noted the UKMTO, an information service for global shipping run by the Royal Navy, while requesting captains to report any “suspicious activity”.
For some cargo shippers, however, the impact of the latest developments appears to be limited by the fact that much of the trade flow between Asia to Europe has already been diverted away from the Red Sea and the Suez canal. Maersk, a Danish container shipping firm that vies with the Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) for the title of world’s largest, stopped using the shortest route to the EU market on 2 January, three days after Houthi forces attacked the container ship Maersk Hangzhou, prompting an intervention by the US military.
“It’s a longer journey, so you need more fuel and more vessels to keep the weekly sailings,” Maersk spokesperson Rainer Horn told Euronews of the firm’s decision to re-route vessels round the Cape of Good Hope. But the impact on trade was “not comparable with what we saw during the Corona pandemic…it’s just a single spot where you can’t sail”.
The increased shipping costs are often negligible for customers using containers to ship their products into Europe, according to Horn. “If you have 30,000 T-shirts in a 40-foot container, and you pay $200 dollars more, it’s a few cents,” Horn said. “The good thing about container shipping is the impact of transport costs are minimal to the product.”
The Spanish government is seeking to contain a scandal linked to EU pandemic funds, categorically denying that it used European money to pay pensions, as member states prepare for tough budget talks amid deep divisions over how funding should be allocated.
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An official in Madrid with direct knowledge of how EU funds are structured told Euronews that a technical matter is being instrumentalised in a way that is “simply false”, accusing the opposition of playing politics over what it describes as an accounting issue.
A Spanish budget watchdog reported earlier this month that the government of Pedro Sánchez used budget credits linked to the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), an economic plan partly funded through common debt designed to revitalise the bloc’s economy after Covid, to partly finance Spanish pensions in November 2024.
Madrid insists it did not breach the rules.
The European Commission asked Madrid for clarification after initial newspaper reports, according to a person familiar with the matter. It did not issue a follow-up request once Madrid provided an explanation, and Spanish authorities consider the issue closed.
However, the political scandal lingers, even as Madrid insists that “not a single euro” of EU money has been misused, amid backlash in so-called frugal countries. Spain and Italy were the biggest beneficiaries of the €750 billion recovery fund approved in summer 2020 after difficult talks.
In Madrid, the opposition People’s Party has demanded that Sánchez appear before Congress to explain the matter. The issue is also making waves in the European Parliament, with strong reactions from conservative lawmakers.
“If these allegations are confirmed, we are facing a serious abuse of European taxpayers’ money,” wrote Tomáš Zdechovský (Czechia/EPP), an influential centre-right member of the European Parliament’s budgetary committee, on X. “Europe cannot tolerate any misuse of recovery funds.”
“Is €10 billion in EU funds, intended for recovery after the pandemic, quietly being used to help pay Spanish pensions? It would confirm our worst fears about these funds,” said Dirk Gotink (The Netherlands/EPP).
Madrid sources insist the issue is being overblown for political purposes.
A government official pointed to the country’s economic performance and pushed back against the frugal-versus-south narrative, which often presents the wealthier north subsidising the weaker south. “Spain is the fastest growing economy in Europe, Germany is not paying our pensions,” said a second Madrid official.
The incident does, however, underscore the additional complications the country is facing due to its inability to approve a budget in a fragmented parliament. After failing to deliver a fresh budget for 2025, Madrid was forced to roll over a plan approved in 2023.
A fight over the EU’s financial future
The timing of the controversy is particularly sensitive.
Brussels is preparing to launch negotiations on the next Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF), the EU’s seven-year budget for 2028–2034, and a central question will be what to do with the roughly €750 billion in joint debt accumulated through the recovery plan.
That programme was the largest and most politically consequential collective borrowing exercise in EU history. Whether it is ultimately seen as a success or a cautionary tale will inevitably shape how member states approach future proposals for shared financing.
Spain, the second-largest recipient of the initiative’s funding with a total of around €60 billion already received, has been among the most vocal advocates for an ambitious European budget and a permanent mechanism to pool financing needs.
Spanish Finance Minister Carlos Cuerpo has argued that pooling national debt at the EU level could generate annual savings of up to €25 billion.
Cuerpo, who is now Sánchez’s number two in government, echoed remarks made by France, Mario Draghi and a number of European intellectuals calling for a more efficient borrowing mechanism that would allow the EU to tap into the European Commission’s triple-A rating and lower financing costs for all 27 member states.
While the European Commission’s current budget proposal does not include new borrowing, contentious debate lies ahead over how to finance the repayment of existing recovery debt. Frugal northern countries like the Netherlands and Germany favour strict repayment schedules, even if that means cuts to other spending programmes.
On Thursday, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz reiterated his country’s opposition, even if the German central bank has been more nuanced about the benefits and risks of pooling debt.
Southern member states, including France and Greece, are pushing to roll over the debt accumulated during the pandemic, with President Emmanuel Macron describing calls for early repayments as “idiotic”. Paris is an advocate of a European safe-asset mechanism.
A European official supportive of the plan said the Spanish controversy is being weaponised not so much against Madrid, but against proposals put forward by southern countries ahead of the budget talks.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if this is used to kill rollover proposal,” the diplomat said.
The issue of the next European budget will feature in an EU summit scheduled in June.
The United States and China will discuss guardrails on artificial intelligence, including establishing a protocol for keeping powerful A.I. models out of the hands of nonstate actors, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Thursday.
Mr. Bessent, who was speaking from Beijing in an interview with CNBC, did not give more details, including when these discussions would take place. But Xi Jinping, China’s leader, and President Trump had been expected to discuss A.I. during their summit in the Chinese capital.
If these talks happen, it would be the first time the two countries formally take up the issue during Mr. Trump’s second term. The capabilities and usage of A.I. have grown rapidly, and so have concerns that this technology could be weaponized by hackers and terrorists, or spiral out of human control.
“The two A.I. superpowers are going to start talking,” Mr. Bessent said. “We’re going to set up a protocol in terms of, how do we go forward with best practices for A.I. to make sure nonstate actors don’t get ahold of these models.”
Still, Mr. Bessent made clear that the fierce competition between the United States and China for supremacy in A.I. — which has been a major hurdle to cooperation on safety — remained front of mind for U.S. policymakers. Officials and experts in both countries have argued that they cannot slow technological development and risk losing out to their rivals.
Mr. Bessent said that the United States was willing to cooperate with China on A.I. safety because “the Chinese are substantially behind us” in terms of the technology’s development.
“I do not think we would be having the same discussions if they were this far ahead of us. So we’re going to put in U.S. best practices, U.S. values, on this, and then roll those out to the world,” Mr. Bessent said.
Experts have suggested that China’s A.I. models may be a few months behind the leading U.S. models.
Another hurdle to the United States and China working together on A.I. safety is that they have generally focused on different potential threats.
American experts have generally highlighted existential risks, such as the possibility of artificial general intelligence, or super-intelligence that exceeds that of humans. Chinese researchers and officials have more often highlighted risks related to social stability and information control, such as the possibility of chatbots producing content that challenges China’s leadership and policies.
Still, researchers in both countries have highlighted some shared risks, such as the possibility of A.I. being used to develop new biological weapons.
Ship SEIZED near UAE coast, UK military says
Iranian forces seized a vessel 38 nautical miles off the UAE coast early Thursday, a brazen provocation occurring just as President Donald Trump and Xi Jinping met in Beijing discussing key issues like the Strait of Hormuz.
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A ship was seized off the coast of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) near the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday morning, the British military reported.
The ship was boarded and “taken by unauthorized personnel” while it was roughly 38 nautical miles northeast of the United Arab Emirates’ oil export terminal Fujairah, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) reported Thursday.
UKMTO spotted the ship heading toward Iranian territorial waters after the seizure, it reported Thursday.
British authorities did not release information on who the ship belonged to or who seized it. Despite the lack of official corroboration, the BBC reported that the Honduras-flagged Hui Chuan was seized in the Strait on Thursday.
CARGO SHIP ATTACKED BY SMALL CRAFT NEAR STRAIT OF HORMUZ, UK MARITIME AGENCY SAYS
Ships are anchored in the Strait of Hormuz off Bandar Abbas in southern Iran on May 4. A report on May 15 said a ship was seized off the coast of the United Arab Emirates and is being brought toward Iranian waters. (Amirhossein Khorgooei/ISNA/AFP)
Citing the risk-management company Vanguard, the BBC reported that the ship’s operators told Vanguard that the Hui Chuan was operating as a “floating armory” for ships in the Strait to defend themselves from pirates.
A container ship sits at anchor in the Strait of Hormuz off Bandar Abbas, Iran, as a motorboat passes in the foreground on May 2, 2026. (Amirhosein Khorgooi/ISNA via AP)
At least two other ships have already been seized in the Strait of Hormuz since February.
IRAN SAYS ITS SMALL SUBS DEPLOYED TO STRAIT OF HORMUZ AS EXPERT EXPLAINS THREAT: ‘VULNERABLE TO DETECTION’
A cargo ship sails in the Persian Gulf toward the Strait of Hormuz on April 22, 2026. (AP Photo)
In April, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) seized the Panamanian-flagged MSC Francesca and the Epaminondes ships in the Strait.
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Fox News Digital contacted UKMTO and Vanguard for further information but did not immediately receive a response.
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